James Webb Space Telescope targeted these objects for its 1st images; NASA releases list

NASA has released a list of cosmic objects that the James Webb Space Telescope targeted for its first full-colour images and spectroscopic data. The world's most powerful observatory will release these images on July 12 during NASA's live event at 8 pm IST. The agency said that the listed targets represent the first wave of full-colour scientific images and spectra the observatory has gathered and the official beginning of Webb’s general science operations. 

What did Webb observe?

• Carina Nebula: Located approximately 7,600 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina, this nebula is one of the largest and brightest in the sky. Nebulae are stellar nurseries, also called factories of star formation, and the Carina Nebula is home to many massive stars, several times larger than the Sun.
• WASP-96 b: The WASP-96b is a giant exoplanet, meaning a planet outside our solar system, and it is located about 1,150 light-years from Earth. Composed mainly of gas, this planet orbits its star in an extremely tight orbit making its year just 3.4 days long. NASA says that it has as massive as Jupiter and was discovered in 2014.
• Southern Ring Nebula: Also called the "Eight-burst" nebula, the Southern Ring is a planetary nebula, meaning an expanding cloud of gas, surrounding a dying star. Located nearly 2,000 light-years away, the Southern Ring Nebula is about half a light-year in diameter.
• Stephan’s Quintet: Remembered as the first compact galaxy group ever discovered in 1877, Stephan’s Quintet lies about 290 million light-years away from our planet. According to NASA, it is located in the constellation Pegasus and four of its five galaxies are locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters.
• SMACS 0723: The SMACS 0723 are massive galaxy clusters that have the power to magnify and distort the light of objects behind them. Owing to these distortions, such clusters provide a deep field view into both the extremely distant and intrinsically faint galaxy populations.

Notably, the Webb telescope is currently orbiting the second Lagrange point which is 15 lakh kilometres away from our planet. Launched on December 25, 2021, the telescope has been jointly developed by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) for a cost of $10 billion.